Turok: Evolution

by Acclaim Video Games

Product Features

• The game starts in Texas, 1886. Captain Bruckner struggles with the young brave named Tal'Set, but during their battle, both men fall through a strange portal. Tal'Set awakes in the Lost Land, chosen as the Turok, the warrior who saves the people from deadly reptilian hordes -- now being led by Captain Bruckner!
• Lush jungle environments await you as you battle through dozens of levels
• Realistic AI enables troops to take cover, establish positions and even surrender
• More than thirty weapons, like the all-new Gravity Disrupter Beam, Swarm Bore and Variable Payload Cruise Missiles
• Play the unique flight missions where you soar through the skies on a fully-armed Pteranodon

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00006599Q
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: August 28, 2002
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (101 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,020 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

The granddaddy of console first-person shooters makes its way to next-generation consoles in style in Turok Evolution. Blast your way through velociraptors, stegosaurs, ankylosaurs, brachiosaurs, and other enemies with the most ludicrously destructive weapons ever--including variable payload cruise missiles, gravity disruptor beams, and the mighty swarm bore--and prepare to pick your jaw up off the floor when you see the devastation they cause. The graphics are utterly gorgeous: the game's 50-odd species, from harmless ickle butterflies to merciless T. rexes, are rendered in painstaking detail, and the environments are lush and interactive--plants and trees move as creatures brush through them, and you can shoot down trees to crush your enemies (or scuttle off as they try to knock piles of rocks down on you). The explosions and enemy deaths are particularly gobsmacking, and the sound effects are just as good.

Thankfully, all this is backed up by great gameplay--an entirely new game engine has been developed for next-gen hardware, and though Turok Evolution is principally a first-person shooter, in certain levels you're backed up by a squad of allies, and in others you get to ride a flying dino with strap-on rocket launchers. The advanced AI means that both enemies and allies behave in a realistic manner and will adapt their tactics depending on whether you approach with stealth or force. There are over 60 stages across a variety of single- and split-screen multiplayer modes, with different difficulty levels for rookies or experts. Turok Evolution is an absolute must-have for FPS fans. --Rikki Price

Product Description

In Turok: Evolution, you must save the River People of the Lost Land from the threat of the Biosaurs, with an all-new leader -- Turok's oldest enemy! Great graphics, sound and gameplay!

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Could have been a great game, September 7, 2002

By 

Team Steinert (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Turok: Evolution (Video Game)

I remember playing the first Turok game of this series on the N64. It was good, but had some annoying control issues and infuriating 'jump' sequences. I figured that by the 3rd game of the series they'd have things ironed out - wrong.

There's great potential here - the sound effects are very well done, the levels are huge, and the dinosaurs and A.I. are good. But...

* There are long levels with few saves and sometimes unclear objectives.
* There are 'cheap' deaths. Sometimes you have no idea why you were killed. I don't mind if a game is hard, but it needs to follow some sort of logic so you feel you were beaten fairly.
* The stupid jumps are back. I feel precise jumping has no place in a 1st person shooter unless you can change perspective. For example I just played 30 minutes to get near the end of a level, only to miss a jump and die. I am not particularly interested in starting over...
* The voice acting (especially the flying chick) stinks.

I didn't expect it to compare to Halo, but I figured it would be a fun shooter. I should have known when the box had a blurb from Maxim magazine saying the game was great. I love Maxim but they don't know doo-doo about games (judging by previous reviews).

I wanted to like it. I really did...

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, September 1, 2002

By 

"i_dont_have_nicknames" (santa cruz, ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Turok: Evolution (Video Game)

I've been waiting for Turok and hoping...only to be let down. This game is obviously an 'xbox port' as the graphics are simply horrible! Maybe I've been spoiled by the outstanding graphics of Halo, Oddworld, P. Gotham, etc., but nevertheless, Turok is pretty bad. Adding to bad graphics are the barely comprehensible sounds of your allies and a soundtrack that is more aptly called a one-track as there is one repeating track with no variation. The gameplay in FPS mode is OK and I like the weapon choices, but flight mode is a mess and the controls are extremely difficult. I still haven't figured out how to turn in relatively tight spaces. My last complaint is multiplayer mode: no cooperative play! It's deathmatch, capture the flag and a few other head to head games, but you can't play together (my girlfriend especially hates this oversight). One positive thing I can say about Turok is the concept and all the dinosaurs. I haven't played any of the other Turok games, but running around with dinos all over the place is cool. Anyway, hopefully I can get Fry's to take this back or trade it for 'The Thing' on the 6th.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inconsistent, September 21, 2002

By 

SeriousMite - See all my reviews

This review is from: Turok: Evolution (Video Game)

Turok: Evolution has a terrible multiple personality disorder: sometimes it's this great action packed shooter with awesome lighting effects and high-res textures, and sometimes it's this really ugly-looking, tedious-playing, evil twin.

Turok: Evolution follows the story of the original Dinosaur Hunter: Tel Set. You learn how he was originally transported to the Lost Lands to become a Turok.(well sort of anyway...The story-line's kind of muddled.) Most of the game is just your standard FPS fare: you move through completely linear levels wreaking havoc and shooting everything that moves. It starts off really slow though, with lots of tedious sniping and ugly graphics, but things start to pick up around the fifth chapter or so. You then start doing more indoor levels, which show off the cool lighting and reflection effects, and allow you to engage in more close range combat. Also your weapons arsenal starts to get a lot more interesting.

I think the weapons are probably the coolest aspect of Turok. Most weapons have two modes of fire and some of them transform into completely different weapons (such as the Flechette gun, which can be transformed into a Mini gun). The graphic effects of some of these weapons are truly stunning: the heat-waves on the rocket launcher and flame-thrower are most impressive. In fact, I think the rocket launcher in Turok is probably the coolest rocket launcher I've ever seen in a FPS. There are some really interesting weapons here: for instance, there's the gravity disrupter, which when you press the trigger quickly, will knock enemies backwards, or you can hold the trigger in and it will charge up for a shock-wave attack. You can also switch to the alternate mode and use the gun to pick up enemies and hurl them off cliffs, or bash them against walls and other foes.

The controls are nearly identical to those found in Halo, only the aiming isn't nearly as precise, and your turning speed is far to slow...and then far to fast. You see, Turok has the same problem with aiming that MOH: Frontline suffered from: first the controls move far to slow, and then as you slowly press the thumb-stick further, they suddenly reach a point where they jump to high-speed, and move far to fast, causing you to overshoot what you were aiming for. Fortunately though, with the auto-aim feature enabled, this problem is far more manageable.

There are a few levels where you hop on the back of a pterasaur and fly through canyons in a rail-shooter mode. While the concept of a pterasaur shooter, (complete with lock-on missiles and radio chatter) is super cheezy, and the graphics are quite ugly, I still found it to be kind of thrilling soaring through canyons, narrowly avoiding obstacles, and pulling out of steep dives just in the nick of time. It's nothing terribly great, but it's not as bad as it sounds.

The graphics are just so incredibly inconsistent. Some levels look nearly as good as Halo: with nice lighting effects and reflections. However, some of the levels look like something from an average PS2 game. Even the textures within the levels can be inconsistent. Sometimes you'll notice some really nice looking high-res textures and then a few feet later there'll be an ugly blurry mess. Some of the effects (such as the rippling heat-waves from the rocket launcher) are quite impressive, but some effects are sorely lacking (like water for instance, which is just a flat bluish texture). The frame-rate is alright on the indoor levels, but it does drop a bit when you're outside.

One of my biggest gripes with Turok is the lack of save-points. You can only save after completing a level; this was acceptable on the N64, due to hardware limitations, but the Xbox has an 8 gigabyte hard drive and there's no excuse for using such an archaic save system. I get the feeling they used this system because they knew the inconsistent enemy AI just wouldn't have made the game challenging enough otherwise.

You see the AI enemies in Turok are just really unpredictable (in a bad way). For instance, sometimes you can attempt to snipe an enemy and he'll alert all his buddies to your location, and they'll all instantly know where you are and will immediately proceed to attack you. However, sometimes you can shoot an enemy and he'll just stand there and take it-as if he can't even feel the bullets ripping through his flesh. Again the problem here is consistency.

The multi-player modes are pretty much the usual: capture the flag, death-match, ect.. The frame-rate is fine when you play two players but it really takes a hit when you play with 3 or 4. Unfortunately, Turok does not support the System Link feature-which seems kind of stupid to me. I mean how much time does it take to add in System Link support?!

With 14 chapters, each consisting of several levels, Turok is quite a large FPS. I think maybe, it would have been better if they made the game smaller and then spent the extra time polishing things up. It seems they just spread themselves to thin and weren't able keep the level of quality consistent. At times Turok really shows some glimpses of brilliance. Perhaps, with another six months development time, Turok could have been a good solid FPS, but as it stands now, it's really not worth playing. There's just too many other FPS's of higher quality coming out this fall and Turok: Evolution just doesn't have anything original to make up for it's technical shortcomings.

Sound: 7/10 The sound is pretty solid, with some nice back-round music and cool sounding weapons.
Graphics: 5/10 A real mixed bag: sometimes they're really good, other times they're terrible.
Controls: 7/10 Would be terrible, but fortunately there's an auto-aim option.
Game-play: 6/10 Your typical FPS: Shoot everything that moves. The reliance on the limited save-points to make the game challenging is really annoying.
Originality: 1/10 Nothing new here.
Value: 8/10 With 14 chapters, and each chapter consisting of several levels there's a good 30-40 hours of
single player, plus there is a multi-player mode. No real replay value for the single-player though.
Difficulty:7/10 Hard due to lack of save-points.
Final Score: 6/10 If it could have been more consistent, it could have been a good solid shooter.